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Radio Heaven
The Eleventh Hour
hrtph005 : LP
Released: August 21, 2008

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Once upon a time there was a band from Chicago called Number One Cup. From 1993-1999 they turned their noses up at “the Chicago sound” and brought to the city (and beyond) a frankenstein style of indie rock stitched together of lo-fi perfection, affected, bent guitar rock and, in general, a much needed but all too under appreciated pop sensibility.

For reasons unknown Number One Cup recorded 2 songs and released them on a 45rpm record under the name The Eleventh Hour in 1997. They nearly forgot to plug in their guitars. Bubbling synthesizers and chord organs set the backdrop to 2 of the most perfect synth-kissed songs I had ever heard.

Michael Lenzi, Seth Kim-Cohen and Patrick O’Connell were the core members of Number One Cup and each contributed their songs and voices to the recordings. The trio continued The Eleventh Hour process and a dark and engaging collection of 9 songs was the outcome. 1997 was the year in which the planet Radio Heaven was created, landed upon and abandoned.

Radio Heaven by The Eleventh Hour has sat in obscurity, unreleased yet finished, since. Until now.

1. Radio Heaven 2. True 3. Emperor of Air 4. No Medicine 5. Fall in Love 6. You Always Say 7. The Heaven Lifestyle 8. Crystal Radio 9. Dying to See

we had recently relocated from the diamosphere granted the chicago summer of 97 was mild compared to home still the coffee was iced and comorbidity rates were high in addition to sarcastic indie rock we were smitten with the sweet heart of synthesized balladry we’d made a 17.78 centimeter vinyl record for wurlitzer jukebox records in the uk since we couldn’t go by our “real” name number one cup we adopted another name and while we were at it another sound it all comes out in the wash except for the dirt so we named ourselves the eleventh hour because we knew the clock would soon strike midnight and we’d have to return to the diamosphere and to our lives as short order cooks in the kitchen of tedium and we dropped our guitars for little white rectangles with raised black rectangles in groups of two and three which asked for different things just like the buttons we swapped for the reptilian skinned drums of our native lands thus amidst high humidity and occasional triple digit temperatures we woodshedded not in a woodshed but in a two room rehearsal space above an antique shop on howard street just this side of evanston and we made some songs like dancing in ski boots occasionally getting aloft occasionally and to us the songs sounded like angels from a planet where radio is the mother of us all so we named them after that planet radio heaven

—Seth Kim-Cohen, New Haven, August 2008

Radio Heaven by The Eleventh Hour is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.